‘I’m Allergic to Your Sperm’ Is the New ‘I’ve Got a Headache’

Watch out, guys. The ladies have a new – and very valid – excuse for avoiding the bedroom time you’ve spent an entire evening working toward. This time it’s not a faux headache or "monthly visitor" story, it’s a real, and potentially serious, allergy.

We give mad respect to any couple who decides to - and then manages to actually follow through with it – wait until they are married to have sex. It’s a big choice for a couple, but it can have many benefits ... unless you wait all that time, get married and then find out that having sex literally makes you sick.

Then you might wish you had some kind of 30-day return policy on the whole "'til death do us part" bit.

This very thing happened to a couple who had waited until their wedding only to find out that when they did finally have sex, the bride had a strange and painful reaction after intimacy.

“I had this bizarre reaction,” said new bride Clara – don’t worry, that’s not her real name. “I had burning and swelling and redness, which was very unusual. I thought I had contracted an STD.”

After several visits to various doctors as well as her own online research, Clara was told by one of her doctors that she was allergic to her husband, Jeff’s – again, so not his name – sperm. A condition known in very unsexy terms as seminal plasma hypersensitivity. Technically, an allergic reaction to the protein in a man’s sperm.

It seems like a made up excuse to avoid sex, but it’s really no joke. The condition affects between 20,000 and 40,000 women in the U.S. and can make sex very painful and unpleasant, both during and after. Some women will get hives and blisters, while others can experience severe abdominal pain and even have difficulty breathing.

The good news for Jeff and Clara, as well as other couples who might suffer from this, is that it’s very treatable. A doctor can help desensitize a woman to the particular proteins in the sperm after some testing and treatment.

The potentially bad news is that this seems like a really good way to put off the sex having if someone isn’t quite in the mood.